Checking out the sports scene

Monday

Nov 19, 2012 at 9:28 AM

The Truman State men’s basketball team suffered another tough loss on Wednesday as they went down to defeat at the hands of a surpisingly good Upper Iowa team. Perhaps they would have had better luck against Lower Iowa, it’s always better to start at the bottom and work your way up. Trumaan has not lost by more than five points in one exhibition game and two regular season games so I think it’s just a matter of time before the ball starts bouncing their way. They have a very tough exhibition game agains Indiana State on Saturday in Terre Haute before getting back to regular season action next week. Of course Indiana State is Larry Bird’s alma mater and if memory serves won the Missouri Valley conference titlt last year.

The Truman State women’s basketball team finally gets to play a regular season game on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. at Pershing Arena. Truman Sate lost to a very good Missouri State team in their first exhibition game of the year before going to Chicage last Friday and knocking off Illinois Chicago. How many Division II teams can say they have defeated a Division I team even if it was an exhibition game? I truly believe that coach Michael Smith may have assembled the best Truman State women’s basketball team in school history. They have a lot of experience as well as a very deep bench and I expect this team to go a long way in their last year in the MIAA.

The Missouir Tigers are back in action on Friday against Nichols State in a game that appears to be extremely winnable. Things get a little tougher for Missouri next week when they play Stanford on Thanksgiving Day at noon. Why are they playing at lunchtime on Thanksgiving Day?

The Missouri Tigers football team has a must win game on Saturday against Syracuse. If Missouri wants to go to a bol game they absolutely must win this game because their chances of beating Text AandM M next Saturday are slim and none in my opinion. It would appear that Missouri finally got its offense on track last Saturday against Tennessee so hopefully that trend will continue against a Syracuse team who has played a very tough schedule this year and are certainly not a team to take lightly.

On Sunday the Kansas City Chiefs continue their torturous NFL season at home against a much improved Cincinnati Bengals football team. It will be interesting to see how the Chiefs recover from Monday night’s heartbreaker. OK, maybe it won’t be interesting. Look on the bright side, things can’t get much worse. OK, maybe they can.

The St. Louis Rams are at home on Sunday to play a New York Jets teams who refuse to embrace the whole Tebow Time phennomenom and have clearly lost their way this season to the point they are now publicly blasting one another in the press. The Rams may not have to worry about beating the Jets, the Jets are doing a really good job of that themselves. The Rams are another team who has to recover after last week’s overtime tie against the 49ers. The Rams season can still be alvaged and the dysfunctional Jets are a perfect team to start the salvage effort against.

The final NASCAR race of the season takes place on Sunday and I hope for his sake that Clint Bowyer is wearing a Kevlar vest in case Jeff Gordon is still mad at him. Gordon is looking forward to the season being over so he can turn his attention to his off season job as a hit man for the Gambino crime family.

Late last week Mark McGwire very quietly resigned as the hitting coach for the St. Oouis Cardinals to take the same position with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Los Angeles is much closer to McGwire’s home and he wanted to be closer to where his family lived. It’s also much easier to get steroids there. The Dodgers are looking forward to having McGwire be their hitting coach are expected to experience several games in a row where they score ten or more runs and beat the cover off the ball followed by several games in a row where they can’t get the ball out of the infield thus causing rampant conniption fits within the Dodgers fan base. McGwire was replaced as hitting coach by John Maybry who I’m sure will do an outstanding job. I’m very happy to see Maybry promoted to that position.

We will be back on Monday with a review of this weekend’s sports action and a look ahead to next week’s busy week of events. Until then, please continue to check out the other blogs on this site and thanks so much for continuing to support this one.